7 responses to “CRC Open House Question # 4”

1. where are these short ramps? in washington?

   i don’t know which ramps in Portland i’d call “short”.

2. The worst offenders are SR14/downtown Vancouver onto I-5 southbound and Hayden Island onto I-5 northbound.
   Answer: remove on/off ramps without adequate merge or exiting lanes. Re-direct traffic onto new arterial bridge as suggested by Jim Howell.
   This will give the existing bridges 3 full thru lanes as opposed to the existing 2 plus thru lanes at much lower cost.

3. The main ramps that effect the I-5 bridges, safety and congestion are the on/off ramps at Hayden Island and the SR-14 ramps just north of the bridges.

   These can be eliminated witout replacing the Interstate Bridges however.

   I strongly lobbied the ODOT team in the Delta Park Project to create external frontage roads as access lanes in everyplace possible in the I-5 corridor. We all have to remember that we have only a 2 and 3-lane corridor and when we get a lot of vehicles getting on and off this creates a lot of trublence and often reduces in a 3-lanes corridor the effective number of vehicles that can pass through the corridor approximately in half.

   A very cheap fix to the I-5 corridor capacity is taking steps to make it more of a limited access corridor and that means reducing by elimination, some of the on/off ramps. The I-5 corridor should not be used as a local street/arterial. The way we do it right now makes it to easy to not use the primary and secondary arterials or mass transit.

   We clog the whole corridor with congestion. At last nights CRC meeting a presenter showed how this cost everyone with a loss of freight mobility. One of the troubles with his presentation was that he was using 2000/2020 time frames and data. He showed that truck traffic just does everything to not get in the I-5 corridor in the AM and PM Peak Period Rush Hours. He showed how truck get on and off the corridor before, in between and after these rush hours. The problem is that these rush hours are getting longer and that reduces the window where we can gain critical freight mobility.

   We now have approximately 7-hours of combined AM and PM rush Hours right at this time, 2005 time frame. When we get out to 2015 or 10-years out this congestion will probably be at least 9 to 10-hours in length with unacceptable Freight Mobility that will cost investment, revenue and jobs.

   With induced traffic in the I-5 corridor coming from a new wide CRC Interstate Bridge replacement project our backup could be 12-hours of prime time. The told all of us at the CRC meeting that this effects labor rates, the number of trucks and the number of people that it take under those circumstances. This hurts our area ability to be competitive and just save jobs, let alone create new jobs.

   It was also stated that the problems in the corridor were not just I-5 when it came to freight mobility it is also freight rail.

4. “Short ramps make getting on and off I-5 difficult and unsafe. Improvements are needed to make connecting to I-5 smoother and safer for trucks and cars.”

   I agree with this statement as long as there are NO socially engineered, priority and/or restricted lanes in the improvement methodology.

   ‘

5. Sounds like a “blow in the wind” type of excuse to find a problem that needs a solution.

   If a vehicle can’t get up to appropriate speed (45mph) on any of the existing ramps the ramps can be rebuilt as stated without dumping 2 billion (or more realistically as mentioned 6 billion) on new bridges.

   In reality, the bridges are NOT the problems, but the poor design of the Washington side of the river immediately close to the bridge and the leading side of Hayden Island and Portland.

   The bridges are FINE. I seriously doubt that an earthquack is gonna come along and quack them down either. They could be retrofitted I’m sure for less than 2 billion dollars.

6. “The bridges are FINE. I seriously doubt that an earthquack is gonna come along and quack them down either. They could be retrofitted I’m sure for less than 2 billion dollars.”

   I would bet that a bridge with a high percentage of steel is seismically superior to one with lots of concrete. Just think of how much inertia a concrete freeway deck has as it settles back to earth after being lifted by a seismic wave. Probably something like the Hawthorne Bridge would stand up best in a quake. There has been some legitimate concern for the counterweights on the I-5 bridges swinging out of control. I would think these could be guyed together to prevent this–and no one knows which characteristics this (rare) Cascadian subduction quake could have.

   I worked on the seismic upgrade of the I-5 bridge in Seattle (Ship Canal Bridge) and it wasn’t that big of a deal. I think we need capacity, so another bridge, serving as an arterial and carrying commuter rail plus alternative modes would accomplish this. And linking to the Vancouver AMTRAK station. (I suppose I should spell it out for the benefit of the CRC folks–“BNSF corridor”….dig??)

7. From SR 14 westbound/Washington Street southbound to I-5 southbound, a vehicle has about 650 feet from the time they exit the curve on the ramp (where one can begin to accelerate to merge) until the time they must merge into a through lane. There is no “safety” zone or a way out, like an offramp or a shoulder to escape to – if you don’t make the merge, you crash into a jersey barrier or the side of the bridge.

   In comparison, from SR 14 westbound to I-5 northbound, a vehicle has a minimum of 830 feet (assuming they merge right away) and a maximum of 1400 feet, before the offramp to Mill Plain.

   Likewise, a vehicle from Marine Drive to southbound I-5 has a minimum of 550 feet and a maximum of over 1200 feet before the Interstate Avenue (Denver Avenue/Delta Park) offramp.

   SR 14 is a freeway; one cannot simply route its traffic onto an arterial without significant impact. Anyone travel on Highway 99W leading from SB I-5 into Tigard? Or Kruse Way & Bangy Road (east of the I-5/217 interchange)?